
BILL VIOLA
Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier 1979, 1979
Color videotape playback with rear projection reflected off water surface of a pool in a large, dark room; aquarium aerator with timing circuit; amplified stereo sound
Continuously Running
JCG9578.2
BILL VIOLA
The Sleepers
1992
Seven channels of black-and-white video
images on seven small monitors, each
sumerged on the bottom of a 55-gallon white
metal barrel filled with water; large dark room
Room dimensions: 12 x 20 x 25 ft (3.7 x 6.1 x
7.6 m)
Continuously running
Edition of 2
JCG0295.2
BILL VIOLA
The Sleepers
1992
Seven channels of black-and-white video
images on seven small monitors, each
sumerged on the bottom of a 55-gallon white
metal barrel filled with water; large dark room
Room dimensions: 12 x 20 x 25 ft (3.7 x 6.1 x
7.6 m)
Continuously running
Edition of 2
Bill Viola: A Retrospective
Installation view, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 2017
Bill Viola: A Retrospective
Installation view, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 2017
Bill Viola: A Retrospective
Installation view, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 2017
Bill Viola: A Retrospective
Installation view, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 2017
BILL VIOLA
Installation view from Electronic Renaissance, 2017
Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
BILL VIOLA
Installation view from Electronic Renaissance, 2017
Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
BILL VIOLA
Installation view from Electronic Renaissance, 2017
Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
BILL VIOLA
Crossroads
2014
Comission for Hamad International Airport, Doha Qatar
Installation view
BILL VIOLA
Mary
2016
Video/sound installation
Color high-definitin video triptych on vertical plasma displays
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Mary
2016
Installation view from St. Paul's Cathedral, London United Kingdom
Photo: Peter Mallet
BILL VIOLA
Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)
2014
Color High-Definition video polyptych on four vertical plasma displays
55 x 133 x 4 in., 140 x 338 x 10 cm
Duration 7:15 minutes
Installation view: St. Paul's Cathedral, London
Photo: Peter Mallet
BILL VIOLA
Inverted Birth
2014
Video/sound installation Color High-Definition video projection on screen mounted on wall in dark room
Projected image size: 16 ft 5 in x 9 ft 3 in, 5 x 2.81 m
Duration 8:22 minutes
Performer: Norman Scott
BILL VIOLA
Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)
2014
Color High-Definition video polyptych on four vertical plasma displays
55 x 133 x 4 in, 140 x 338 x 10 cm
Duration 7:15 minutes
Installation view: St. Paul's Cathedral, London
Photo: Peter Mallet
BILL VIOLA
Walking on the Edge (I)
2012
Color High-Definition video on plasma display mounted on wall
Edition of 5
BILL VIOLA
Ancestors
2012
Color High-Definition video on plasma display mounted vertically on wall
61.2 x 36.4 x 5 in.
Edition of 5
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore
2007
Video/sound installation Color High-Definition video triptych, two 65" plasma screens, one 103" screen mounted vertically, six loudspeakers (three pairs stereo sound)
Room dimensions variable
Installation view, Church of San Gallo, Venice
Photo: Thierry Bal
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore
2007
Video/sound installation Color High-Definition video triptych, two 65" plasma screens, one 103" screen mounted vertically, six loudspeakers (three pairs stereo sound)
Room dimensions variable
Installation view, Church of San Gallo, Venice
Photo: Thierry Bal
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore
2007
Video/sound installation Color High-Definition video triptych, two 65" plasma screens, one 103" screen mounted vertically, six loudspeakers (three pairs stereo sound)
Room dimensions variable
Installation view, Church of San Gallo, Venice
Photo: Thierry Bal
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore
2007
3-channel High Definition Video/Sound Installation Production stills
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore
2007
3-channel High Definition Video/Sound Installation Production stills
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore
2007
3-channel High Definition Video/Sound Installation Production stills
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore,
2007
3-channel High Definition Video/Sound Installation Production stills
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore
2007
3-channel High Definition Video/Sound Installation Production stills
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Ocean Without a Shore
2007
3-channel High Definition Video/Sound Installation Production stills
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Acceptance
2008
Black and white video on a plasma display mounted vertically on wall
61 1/4 x 36 3/8 x 5 in.
155.5 X 92.5 X 12.7 cm
Edition of 5
JCG3772
BILL VIOLA
Helena
2008
Color high-definition video on LCD panel
24 3/4 X 14 X 2 3/8 in.
Edition of 3
BILL VIOLA
Two Women
2008
Color video on a plasma display mounted vertically on wall
Approximate dimensions: 36 x 22 x 3.5 in.
Edition of 5
BILL VIOLA
Isolde's Ascension (The Shape of Light in the Space After Death)
2005
Video and sound installation
61.2 X 36.4 in.
10 minutes 30 seconds
Edition of 12
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
The Fall into Paradise
2005
Video/sound installation
Screen size: 10.5 ft. X 14 ft., 320 cm x 427 cm
9 minutes and 58 seconds
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Becoming Light
2005
Color video on a plasma display mounted vertically on wall
47 1/2 X 28 1/2 X 3 3/4 in.
Edition of 12
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Passage Into Night
2005
Color high-definition video installation
47.6 X 28.5 in.
50 minutes and 14 seconds
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
The Darker Side of Dawn
2005
Color video projection on wall in dark room
128 1/4 X 228 in.
Edition of 3
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Ablutions
2005
Color video diptych on plasma displays mounted vertically on wall
82 X 48 X 4 1/4 in.
Edition of 7
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Dissolution
2005
Color video diptych on plasma displays mounted vertically on wall
82 X 48 X 4 1/4 in.
Edition of 7
Photo: Kira Perov
BILL VIOLA
Tempest (Study for The Raft)
2005
Color video on LCD flat panel mounted on wall
26 X 43 1/2 X 5 in.
Edition of 5
BILL VIOLA
The Lovers
2005
Color video on a plasma display mounted vertically on wall
85 3/4 X 28 1/4 X 4 1/2 in.
Edition of 12
BILL VIOLA
Study for Emergence
2002
Color video on freestanding vertical LCD flat panel LCD
screen: 11 3/4 X 14 5/8 in.
Edition of 3
BILL VIOLA
Four Hands
2001
Video on four LCD panels
9 X 51 X 8 in.
BILL VIOLA
The Quintet of the Silent
2001
Color video on plasma display mounted horizontally on wall
24 3/4 X 42 1/2 X 7 in.
Edition of 5
BILL VIOLA
Union
2000
Two channels of color video on two plasma displays mounted side-by-side, vertically on wall
8 minute loop
40 1/2 X 50 X 7 in.
Edition of 5
BILL VIOLA
The Quintet of Remembrance
2000
Video installation, Color video rear projection on large screen in darkened room
15 1/2 minute loop
12' x 18' x 24' (room dimensions)
Edition of 3
BILL VIOLA
Mary
2000
Video and sound installation
Edition of 3
BILL VIOLA
Ascension
2000
Video/sound installation
Large color video projection on white wall in darkened room; two channels amplified sound
10 minute loop
Edition of 3
BILL VIOLA
Six Heads
2000
Color video on plasma display mounted vertically on wall
40 1/2 X 24 3/4 X 7 in.
Edition of 12
BILL VIOLA
Dolorosa
2000
Color video diptych on two freestanding vertical LCD flat panels framed and hinged together
11 minute loop
16 X 24 1/2 X 5 3/4 in.
Edition of 5
BILL VIOLA
Anima
2000
Color video triptych on three LCD flat panels framed and mounted vertically on wall
83 minute loop
16 1/4 X 75 in.
Edition of 5
BILL VIOLA
The Veiling
1995
Nine scrims, two video laser disc projectors and players, speakers
Edition of 2
BILL VIOLA
Il Vapore
1975
Video and sound installation
144 X 192 X 240 in.
Edition of 2
Bill Viola (b.1951) is widely recognized as one of the leading video artists on the international scene. For over 40 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, and works for television broadcast. Viola’s video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. His single channel videotapes have been broadcast and presented cinematically around the world, while his writings have been published and anthologized for international readers.
Since the early 1970s, Viola has used video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach.
Viola received his BFA in Experimental Studios from Syracuse University in 1973. Since then he has created over 150 works that have been shown in museums, galleries, film festivals, and on public television worldwide. During the 1970s he lived for 18 months in Florence, Italy, as technical director of production in one of the first video art studios in Europe, and then travelled widely to study and record traditional performing arts in the Solomon Islands, Java, Bali, and Japan. In 1977 Viola was invited to show his videotapes at La Trobe Univerisity (Melbourne, Australia) by cultural arts director Kira Perov who, a year later, left Australia to join him in New York. They began a lifelong collaboration, working and travelling together. After they married in 1980 they lived in Japan for a year and a half on a Japan/U.S. Cultural Exchange Fellowship, where they studied Buddhism with Zen Master Daien Tanaka and had an artist-in-residency at Sony Corporation’s Atsugi research laboratories. In 1984 another artist-in-residency at the San Diego Zoo in California produced footage for a project on animal consciousness.
Viola represented the U.S. at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995, premiering an ensemble of five new installation works titled Buried Secrets. In 1997 the Whitney Museum of American Art organized Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey, an exhibition that travelled for two years to six museums in the United States and Europe. He was invited to be a Scholar-in-Residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 1998, and later that year created a suite of three new video pieces for the rock group Nine Inch Nails’ world tour. His 1994 videofilm Déserts, created to accompany the music composition of the same name by Edgard Varèse, received its American premiere at the Hollywood Bowl in August 1999 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. In 2002, Viola completed his most ambitious project, Going Forth By Day, a five part projected digital “fresco” cycle in high definition video, which was on view in Bill Viola: Visions at the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark in 2005. Following the completion of a four-month exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in early 2003, Bill Viola: The Passions travelled to the National Gallery London later that fall, to the Fondación “La Caixa” in Madrid in early 2005, and subsequently to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. In 2004 Viola began collaborating with director Peter Sellars and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen to create a new production of Richard Wagner’s opera, Tristan and Isolde, which was presented in project form by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in December 2004. The production of the complete opera received its world première at the L’Opéra National de Paris, Bastille in April 2005 (with a reprise in November) and was presented once more at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in March 2007, and in New York in April 2007, produced by the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
One of the largest exhibitions of Viola’s installations to date, Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) (2006-2007), drew over 340,000 visitors to the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. In 2007 nine installations were shown at the Zahenta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; and Ocean Without a shore was created for the 15th century Church of San Gallo during the Venice Biennale. In 2008 Bill Viola: Visioni interiori, a survey exhibition organized by Kira Perov, was presented in Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. In 2014, twenty works were shown at the Grand Palais, Paris, and a few months later, part one of the St. Paul’s commission was installed in the London cathedral, Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water). In 2015, Viola had solo exhibitions at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the National Galleries of Scotland. The following year, Bill Viola and the Moving Portrait went on view at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 2017 alone he was the subject of several major museum retrospectives including Palazzo Strozzi, Florence; The Diechtorhallen, Hamburg; Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China; and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Major retrospectives in 2019 include the acclaimed I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like: The Art of Bill Viola at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Bill Viola: Mirrors of the Unseen at La Pedrada - Casa Milà in Barcelona, and Bill Viola / Michelangelo at the Royal Academy of Art in London, which paired video works by Viola with drawings by the Renaissance master from the Royal Collection.
Viola is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989, and the first Medienkunstpreis in 1993, presented jointly by Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, and Siemens Kulturprogramm, in Germany. He holds honorary doctorates from Syracuse University (1995), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1997), California Institute of the Arts (2000), and the Royal College of Art, London (2004) among others, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000. Viola was made a National Academician of the New York-based National Academy in June 2012 and elected an Honorary Royal Academician in 2017. Bill Viola and Kira Perov live and work in Long Beach, California. They have two children.